Might as well be fighting bugs . . .

Rating: 6/10 (12 September 2013)

. . . as to be contending with giant Bio-robots from a poorly-explained intra-galactic wormhole. What all these directors of post-apocalyptic flicks seem not to realize is there comes a point where our world gets so destroyed that the viewer really stops caring about its fate--unless the characters are truly compelling. The latter was the case with ALIEN, made for $11 million in 1979 with the tag line "In space, no one can hear you scream," plus a cast including Sigourney Weaver, Ian Holm, John Hurt (the ELEPHANT MAN himself), Harry Dean Stanton, and Yaphet Kotto. By contrast, the makers of PACIFIC RIM (tag line: "To fight monsters, we created monsters.") obviously did not spend as high a percentage--compared to ALIEN--of their $190 million budget to hire Charlie Hunnam, Diego Klattenhoff, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, and Charlie Day, who fail miserably to make us really care about what happens to them--or their world. All of the humanity in PACIFIC RIM would fit in the little finger of the 1999 science fiction cartoon, THE IRON GIANT. As a robot movie, PACIFIC RIM is to last year's ROBOT & FRANK as the 2008 THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is to its 1951 model. Even CLOVERFIELD has more heart than PACIFIC RIM, which made me really miss the charismatic bugs from the original STARSHIP TROOPERS.